An Investigation Into The Antecedents And Outcomes Of Internet-enabled Supply Chain Integration

Fostering Internet-enabled supply chain integration (IeSCI) has been widely regarded as a critical factor for firm success. However, although the benefits of IeSCI have been widely proposed theoretically, the fact is that IeSCI is still seemingly rare in the real world, and many firms engaged in it have not reaped the expected performance benefits. Meanwhile, there is a great lack of systematic theoretical and empirical understanding of the antecedents which can drive firms to participate in IeSCI, and of how such integration helps firms improve performance. This study aims to derive a syncretic model to explain the underlying mechanisms of the process of IeSCI participation and the influences of IeSCI on firm performance.Drawing upon existing literature and the process perspective, we conceptualize IeSCI participation into four escalating degrees: online information integration, online planning synchronization, online operational coordination, and strategic partnership. Furthermore, based on the lens of the diffusion of innovation theory, institutional theory, and dynamic capability theory, we identify three groups of factors related to firms?ˉmotivation, opportunity, and ability as prominent antecedents of the overall intensity and the four escalating degrees of IeSCI participation with the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) paradigm. Specifically, we hypothesize how efficiency motive, exploration motive, agility motive, complementarities motive, partner power, partner digitization, competition intensity, IT capabilities, and absorptive capacity influence IeSCI participation, and how the overall intensity and the four escalating degrees of IeSCI participation separately impact firm operation, customer service, and financial performance.Using data from 277 firms in China, we find that all identified antecedents, except exploration motive, significantly drive the overall intensity of IeSCI participation. We also show that the influences of the antecedents vary across the escalating degrees of integration: (1) for online information integration, the key antecedents are efficiency motive, complementarities motive, partner power, partner digitization, absorptive capacity, and IT capabilities; (2) for online planning synchronization, the critical antecedents are all factors related to opportunity and ability. No motives have significant impacts; (3) for online operational coordination, the important antecedents are agility motive, partner promotion, partner digitization, absorptive capacity, and IT capabilities. Noteworthy is that the impact of the exploration motive on online operational coordination is negative; (4) for strategic partnerships, only agility motive, partner promotion, competition intensity, and absorptive capacity act as significant antecedents.We also find that the overall intensity of IeSCI participation significantly improves firm operation, customer service, and financial performance. The results indicate that these four degrees of integration play different roles in improving firm performance. Specifically, online information integration only improves customer service, and online planning synchronization only impacts financial performance. Comparably, online operational coordination and strategic partnership improves all three aspects of performance. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.